God is not a Coke machine
Having never read “This Present Darkness,” I can’t comment on the parts of the post that relate to it, but Kat Coble is exactly right when she talks about the nature and purpose of prayer.
Her comment about God not being a vending machine made me laugh. When I was a freshman at Famous Televangelist University, still a little overawed at everything and still trying to process my first real exposure to charismata, we had a chapel speaker (Fred Price, if you must know) who seemed to imply that any and all sickness represented a lack of faith on the sick person’s fault. He pushed all the other “name-it-and-claim-it” buttons as well.
I still remember my wing chaplain during our wing meeting that night in the dorm telling us, “regardless of what you may have heard, God is not a Coke machine.” It was not only the truth, it was an example to me of thinking for yourself and standing up for the truth in a Christian college environment where that is sometimes the hardest thing to do.
I found that link to my old wing chaplain’s bio just now, while writing this post. I had no idea where he was or what he was doing, but now I will have to drop him a line and tell him how much of an impact his words made on me.
UPDATE: I should have pointed out that the Coke machine bit was a reference to a metaphor used frequently by Famous Televangelist himself, which made it even more courageous for Bill to call it out.
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